> From a practical perspective, once people can vaccinate to prevent death AND get a cure, many people's definition of "pandemic" is that it is over.
Vaccines weren't available until summer 2021, which was unexpectedly early, and still aren't widely available in some parts of the world. No reasonable "definition" puts the end of a pandemic at summer 2020, but "short and temporary" was certainly the messaging in March 2020.
What I'm saying is that in March 2020 (or perhaps April) it was was obvious that the world would not be out of the pandemic for years in the best case scenario, but many people believed things would be back to normal in weeks or perhaps months. Which... just doesn't have any historical precedent and was clearly wishful thinking. I remember expressing this on the phone to family and friends -- that covid would last years -- and no one believed me.
> I'm curious your thoughts on the intentional efforts are to crush demand, can you elaborate?
Central banks change interest rates in order to shift aggregate demand curves. "Curbing inflation" sounds less negative than "destroying demand", but the central tenant of central bank interest rate policy is that the two are causally related to one another.
Vaccines weren't available until summer 2021, which was unexpectedly early, and still aren't widely available in some parts of the world. No reasonable "definition" puts the end of a pandemic at summer 2020, but "short and temporary" was certainly the messaging in March 2020.
What I'm saying is that in March 2020 (or perhaps April) it was was obvious that the world would not be out of the pandemic for years in the best case scenario, but many people believed things would be back to normal in weeks or perhaps months. Which... just doesn't have any historical precedent and was clearly wishful thinking. I remember expressing this on the phone to family and friends -- that covid would last years -- and no one believed me.
> I'm curious your thoughts on the intentional efforts are to crush demand, can you elaborate?
Central banks change interest rates in order to shift aggregate demand curves. "Curbing inflation" sounds less negative than "destroying demand", but the central tenant of central bank interest rate policy is that the two are causally related to one another.